Absolute Denial

David, an obsessive, genius programmer sacrifices everything in his personal and professional life to build a computer of unprecedented power to test his theory on AI. As the programme he’s written becomes sentient and Dave becomes more tired and paranoid, a battle for superiority between man and machine begins. Drawing on the theme of Frankenstein, Ryan Braund’s debut feature is a remarkably ambitious hand-crafted animation. The haunting electronic score adds a sense of urgency while Jeremy J.Smith-Sebasto as the voice of Al evokes the calm but sinister superiority of HAL from 2001.

‘I was fascinated by the idea of humans being hackable. I thought to myself, what would that scenario look like? You have two very powerful minds, both trying to manipulate each other. And how do these vulnerabilities of the human mind look on screen? How do you visualize that? I don’t like to watch animation that’s too polished. I like to see an artist’s pencil stroke or brush stroke or fingerprints, in the case of claymation. When it’s imperfect, I think there’s a stronger connection between the artist and audience. And I think that the audience takes away something from both the person and the film. I love this juxtaposition.’

Director Ryan Braund, from an interview with Zippy Frames.